From: Gina Miller (nanogirl@halcyon.com)
Date: Thu May 27 1999 - 15:16:09 MDT
IBM opens Deep Computing Institute
May 24 — Big Blue, the nickname for International Business Machines Corp.,
the world’s largest computer maker, is setting out to prove not only how
wide, but how deep, its computing prowess has become.
IN THE PAST YEAR, IBM has begun to lay out its vision of the future
based on “pervasive computing” — making computers more widely available by
embedding them in everyday objects —and “deep computing” — using
supercomputer power to untangle some of the world’s thorniest computing
challenges.
On Monday, the Armonk, N.Y.-based company said it will unveil its
Deep Computing Institute, a $29 million research effort to join academic and
industry researchers in a bid to use massive computational power to attack
complex problems.
Deep computing techniques involve using supercomputer-scale machines,
advanced software and sophisticated mathematical formulas to enable
researchers to take on daunting scientific and commercial tasks that can
involve trillions of variables.
The term “deep computing” was inspired by IBM’s Deep Blue
chess-playing computer, which defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov
in 1996.
William Pulleyblank, director of mathematical sciences at IBM
Research, will serve as director of the institute. The institute will be
guided by an advisory board of leaders from universities, government
laboratories and corporations.
IBM is already a top maker of supercomputers — supplying more than 100 of
the world’s 500 largest supercomputers — but the company is pushing to widen
the use of the technology beyond academia to a range of new business
problems
“Deep computing combines the best of business and scientific
computing techniques to find the value buried in all this data and to apply
that information to solve real-world problems,” Pulleyblank said in a
statement detailing the plan.
“Deep computing...can help find the proverbial needle in an entire
field of haystacks, analyzing vast reservoirs of data to uncover key
relationships between gene sequences needed to understand disease,” he said,
using a biotechnology example.
Supercomputers are the world’s fastest computers and allow
researchers to throw maximum data-crunching power at a single research
problem, or set of problems. Mainframes, their less powerful commercial
siblings, handle general purpose calculations but are less suited to such
intensive research.
IBM is already a top maker of supercomputers — supplying more than
100 of the world’s 500 largest supercomputers — but the company is pushing
to widen the use of the technology beyond academia to a range of new
business problems.
IBM is committing more than 120 scientists and technologists in eight
research labs in New York; San Jose, Calif.; Austin, Texas; Tokyo; Zurich,
Haifa, Israel; Beijing and New Delhi to the Deep Computing Institute
project.
They will collaborate initially on deep computing projects in areas
ranging from how to schedule personnel in complex environments, such as
airline flights, and the modeling of precise weather patterns.
Deep computing techniques are spurring advances in computer
optimization, simulation, visualization, and advanced pattern matching and
discovery in fields ranging from financial investment risk analysis to drug
research to oil discovery.
“Thanks to the tremendous advances in computing power and
mathematical algorithms, it’s now possible to tackle problems of
unbelievable complexity — things we couldn’t dream of doing even a few years
ago,” he said.
As part of the project, the Deep Computing Institute will publish
over the Internet the IBM Visualization Data Explorer, a powerful software
package that can be used to analyze and create three-dimensional
representations of data.
Data Explorer uses computational and 3-D graphics rendering tools in
a programmable framework that allows computer users to rapidly create visual
images, uncovering patterns, trends, and ’what-if’ scenarios hidden within
highly complex data.
The product is used by a multinational bank to identify and manage
financial risk in portfolios worldwide. In energy exploration, it can depict
oil-flow simulations to improve drilling success rates and boost underground
reservoir yields.
The underlying programming code for IBM Data Explorer will be given
away as “open source” software to researchers at the institute’s Web site,
beginning May 26. The site will be located at
http://www.research.ibm.com/dci/software.html.
Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
Web:
http://www.nanoindustries.com
E-mail:
nanogirl@halcyon.com
Alternate E-mail
echoz@hotmail.com
"Nanotechnology: solutions for the future."
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